NEWSWATCH: “The Kremlin’s Advantage; Why Cyberwar Will Continue” – Foreign Affairs/ Eugene B. Rumer
The hack of … Democratic National Committee emails, now widely attributed to Russian intelligence, has set off a political earthquake in the United States. The brazenness of the attack, the crude attempt to intervene in a U.S. presidential election, and the equally bald-faced denial in the face of mounting evidence of Russian government complicity …. * * * Events of the past few years — from the annexation of Crimea to the DNC hack-are not an aberration … they are part of the same chain. The adversarial, hostile relationship with Russia is here to stay. Putin is here to stay, too, … very likely to run and be re-elected in 2018 …. Some of the needed steps are already being taken — military preparedness moves … adopted at NATO’s … summits are necessary and will probably be followed by more measures to boost NATO’s conventional and nuclear defense and deterrent capabilities. But tanks and guns alone are not enough. More needs to be done-in cyber, intelligence, information operation, and other forms of hybrid warfare, as well as deterrence, along with resilience and defense measures against it to meet Russia’s challenge. More also is needed to be ready to conduct counter-offensive operations when the need arises. And all of this has to be done while also looking for ways to avoid accidental escalation and maintain some lines of communications with the Kremlin. Recognizing the nature of the threat that Russia presents is the first step toward dealing with it.